Kurt Kaminski

Kurt Kaminski is an artist, graduate student, and researcher pursuing an MS in the Media Arts & Technology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Previously a lighter and compositor for animated feature films, Kurt now studies technology as a medium for exploring society’s evolving relationship with nature. In using the tools and discoveries of science and mathematics, he binds the exquisite mechanisms of the natural world to new cultural artifacts and experiences. Kurt’s work spans multiple disciplines including data visualization, digital fabrication, live performance, generative art, and photography.

Folded Diamond

54 x 54 cm

Digital print

2016

I became interested in aperiodic tilings after learning of their presence in both Islamic architecture and the quasicrystalline atomic lattice of certain materials. The large corpus of tiling rules begs aesthetic study, many seeming to synthesize medieval motifs with the complexity of CAD software. These pieces are based on the Watanabe Ito Soma 12-fold tiling and its three prototiles. By overlaying tubular frames derived from 4 iterations of a single prototile, the initial rule hovers above an array of increasingly granular interrelationships, guiding the eye in discovering new patterns and connections. Careful use of color and lighting, with a touch of stochasticity, highlight multilayered rhythms and harmonies produced by the algorithm.